A cold Christmas Day morning, and I am thinking about the idea of writing erotica. I'm still not entirely persuaded that anyone male--- straight, white, "cis/cis-presenting" male and of a certain age ----is allowed to write erotica at all here in the age of the gender wars. That's an issue that needs to be considered, isn't it? Is it permissible at all for anyone male (let alone male and embodying all the other things so despised by the gender warriors) to describe sex or create sexual imagery? Is it permissible for males to have sexual fantasies at all in the age of the gender wars?
I'm looking out from my rooms at a winter morning and trying to explain what I'd like to see in erotica, or what I'd like to write about. Sets and settings, obviously. I always begin with sets and settings. Where something happens matters intensely to me. Place, time, decor--- the context matters. Sex, or at least a rencontre, means very little without the right mise-en-scène. Setting matters.
A fairly well-known writer of on-line erotica, an expat woman in Indochina who calls herself Remittance Girl once angrily blocked me from a discussion because I disagreed with her about the use of brand names in erotica. I'm no fan of the sex-and-shopping novels ("shopping and fucking") from the 1980s that made having Louboutin pumps and a millionaire, hard-muscled lover totally interchangeable for wealthy cougars in L.A., but I do like the idea of brand names in stories (and not just in erotica). Brand names provide context; they do help define a social background for the story. And, yes, they are aspirational. Brand names allow me the chance to make lists. I've done that with all kinds of genres, and done it all my life. Lists and brand names do help shape the encounter.
The hero in a thriller drinks this kind of Scotch and wears these kinds of shirts. He takes these items of equipment with him to the hills of Nuristan. Some writers do that deliberately, of course. Ian Fleming's James Bond novels were notorious for that. They were as much about teaching postwar young Englishmen how to dress for an upwardly mobile life as much as they were about the spy plots. I do want brand names and lists, despite Remittance Girl's hostility to them. I want to be able to read erotica and look for class markers and style guides. Sex has to be about a certain kind of stylishness. The physical encounter is never as important as the presentation. And I do judge sex by presentation. Flesh and bodies are never very attractive on their own, or at least they're not sufficient to make an encounter work, even if they are necessary. I don't want to be inside a story, or identify with a story, that's not appealing to the eye, or to a sense of style. That's style in both senses, mind you--- literary as well as fashion. Maybe that's what Remittance Girl was objecting to. Maybe she was angry that I was saying that sex--- an encounter ---is or should be defined and judged not by flesh or physical pleasure, but by presentation. I can't imagine it any other way, though.
Writing erotica... Anything I'd write would have lists implicit. What the characters did and how they approached it would be shaped by locations and decor. It would be important to them that what they were doing be part of the stories in their heads. My characters wouldn't be the Beautiful People from the "Dynasty"-era shopping-and-fucking novels, but they would be people who wanted sex to be framed like a story, to happen in ways that would allow them to live up to the stories in their heads. If they're over-literary, well, so am I. The important thing is to have a correct setting and a correct set of symbols and markers to deploy. I grew up reading things like "Story of O"--- erotica set in the places and social settings I wanted to visit, erotica set in what were always aspirational settings for me.
Erotica for me has to have a self-aware literary edge. And it has to have a certain kind of s/m flavor. But that goes back to the idea of literary style. What's more "literary" than high-end s/m, with all its roots in Catholic ritual and French novels...?
I need to think more about that, about what and how to present the kinds of characters I'd like to use. And about how to present s/m--- how to deploy it and how to have my characters understand it.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Monday, December 16, 2013
Ninety-One: Pages
Classic and antique erotica--- I've been writing about that. I'd love to have a well-stocked library with its own section for classic and antique erotica. If you've been reading here, you already know that. I'd want the books to be not just titles that are classics, or at least exemplars of sub-genres, but finely bound as well. I'm not sure what it means to collect first editions of erotica, but having original editions--- high-end 18th-century and Victorian editions ---is an obsession all its own.
There's still one question, though. Let's say that I could have a shelf or two of classic erotica, of things done from the early 18th-century up through the early 1950s. The question remains: what counts as "real" erotica, "serious" erotica today?
I'm not at all sure what counts as "serious" erotica these days, and I'm not exactly sure what I'd be looking for in erotica. Certainly nothing like "50 Shades" or its progeny. Nothing like the long list of "erotic romance" titles listed at GoodReads, where far too many of the stories seem to be Harlequin romances with explicit sex.
I'm a literary snob, and I'll admit that. I'd want erotica to be literary as much as anything else. I'd demand something that was aware of itself as literature. Explicit is fine--- graphic is better. But it has to be crafted the way literary fiction is crafted. But you know that about me. I want erotica to have the same quality of writing I expect from any other genre I read.
But there's something deeper here as well. Even if I decided to write my own erotica, what am I still allowed to write in the age of the gender wars? It strikes me that so much of the erotica produced in the last fifteen or twenty years has been by female authors, and I'm wondering if there's not a kind of social rule here. Are men who write self-described erotica regarded with suspicion, or at least with more suspicion than female writers? Are male authors of erotica regarded as working not just in a sketchy field, but as being suspect themselves for all the usual sins?
If I decided to write erotica, I'd have immediate problems. Writing about sex is regarded as having political overtones, as being immediately subject to political criticism in a way that, say, writing detective stories isn't. I'm male, white, heterosexual, and of a certain age. (Should I add "cisgendered", too? And "educated middle class"?) There'd be a question of whether I was even allowed to write erotica. All the more so if what I wrote had age-disparate couples or told s/m-inflected tales.
The columnist Sarah Nicole Prickett is noted for dismissing anything written by "Dads"--- white males over 30 ---as being works she refuses to read. She sees no reason for such people to write anything anymore. And when I follow on-line literary feuds, I see that she's not the only one to hold that view. And it takes very little imagination to imagine the abuse a male author of erotica could face. You'd never be able to write literary s/m, especially if you had a heroine who volunteered to be the submissive parter. You'd never get away with trying to be inside her head, and making her "conventionally" beautiful would only seal your fate in the eyes of the gender warriors and the social justice mob.
There have been times when writing erotica was a sin--- providing temptation to lure readers into sin and debauchery. That actually sounds amusing these days, and I suppose anyone who was serious about what they wrote would enjoy the idea of having that kind of effect. Here in these latter days, writing erotica is taken as being a kind of political statement, as being "really" about issues of oppression. To write erotica as someone too male, too old, too pale, and too straight is to be instantly accused of writing erotica for all the basest or most ideologically-evil reasons.
I can have classic or antique volumes on my shelves. What I can't do is write the erotica I'd like to read without being immediately attacked on non-literary grounds. I told you this before--- I am a roué and a gentleman of a certain age. In the age of the gender was, there are no words for what I am that don't imply that any desires I may have are vile and oppressive.
There's still one question, though. Let's say that I could have a shelf or two of classic erotica, of things done from the early 18th-century up through the early 1950s. The question remains: what counts as "real" erotica, "serious" erotica today?
I'm not at all sure what counts as "serious" erotica these days, and I'm not exactly sure what I'd be looking for in erotica. Certainly nothing like "50 Shades" or its progeny. Nothing like the long list of "erotic romance" titles listed at GoodReads, where far too many of the stories seem to be Harlequin romances with explicit sex.
I'm a literary snob, and I'll admit that. I'd want erotica to be literary as much as anything else. I'd demand something that was aware of itself as literature. Explicit is fine--- graphic is better. But it has to be crafted the way literary fiction is crafted. But you know that about me. I want erotica to have the same quality of writing I expect from any other genre I read.
But there's something deeper here as well. Even if I decided to write my own erotica, what am I still allowed to write in the age of the gender wars? It strikes me that so much of the erotica produced in the last fifteen or twenty years has been by female authors, and I'm wondering if there's not a kind of social rule here. Are men who write self-described erotica regarded with suspicion, or at least with more suspicion than female writers? Are male authors of erotica regarded as working not just in a sketchy field, but as being suspect themselves for all the usual sins?
If I decided to write erotica, I'd have immediate problems. Writing about sex is regarded as having political overtones, as being immediately subject to political criticism in a way that, say, writing detective stories isn't. I'm male, white, heterosexual, and of a certain age. (Should I add "cisgendered", too? And "educated middle class"?) There'd be a question of whether I was even allowed to write erotica. All the more so if what I wrote had age-disparate couples or told s/m-inflected tales.
The columnist Sarah Nicole Prickett is noted for dismissing anything written by "Dads"--- white males over 30 ---as being works she refuses to read. She sees no reason for such people to write anything anymore. And when I follow on-line literary feuds, I see that she's not the only one to hold that view. And it takes very little imagination to imagine the abuse a male author of erotica could face. You'd never be able to write literary s/m, especially if you had a heroine who volunteered to be the submissive parter. You'd never get away with trying to be inside her head, and making her "conventionally" beautiful would only seal your fate in the eyes of the gender warriors and the social justice mob.
There have been times when writing erotica was a sin--- providing temptation to lure readers into sin and debauchery. That actually sounds amusing these days, and I suppose anyone who was serious about what they wrote would enjoy the idea of having that kind of effect. Here in these latter days, writing erotica is taken as being a kind of political statement, as being "really" about issues of oppression. To write erotica as someone too male, too old, too pale, and too straight is to be instantly accused of writing erotica for all the basest or most ideologically-evil reasons.
I can have classic or antique volumes on my shelves. What I can't do is write the erotica I'd like to read without being immediately attacked on non-literary grounds. I told you this before--- I am a roué and a gentleman of a certain age. In the age of the gender was, there are no words for what I am that don't imply that any desires I may have are vile and oppressive.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Ninety: Bibliophilia 2
This morning I'm imagining that collection of antique erotica--- the shelves of carefully-preserved, hand-bound volumes. I can imagine running a possessive fingertip over them and taking pride in having found and acquired them; I can imagine feeling a historian's pride in knowing the biographies of the authors and the travels of the individual volumes. I can even imagine feeling a certain academic pride in being able to apply both critical theory and social history methods to the texts. Yet...there's still a question here. What exactly would I want from the collection? What do I expect the books to do?
That's a legitimate question, I think. Erotica has a tenuous position in the literary world because it's seen not as literature, or even as a text to be analyzed, but as something that's simply utilitarian. The purpose of erotica is simply to produce arousal. To have a collection of erotica is to be assembling a shelf of what are in effect tools for getting off. A collection of antique or high-end erotica, the argument goes, is exactly like a shelf full of Fleshlights. An erotica collection can be seen as nothing more than a "spank bank" with antique fonts. Let's leave aside how much I despise "spank bank" as a term--- it's part of the whole vocabulary of words (e.g., "wank", "toss", "rub one out") designed to denigrate and mock male indulgence in the Solitary Vice ---and think for a moment about what the books do.
I'd want that erotica collection because...the books are objects with a certain kind of history, with links to a past of underground presses and clandestine circulation, to a specific kind of moneyed demimonde. To some degree, the actual stories inside the books are never as alluring as the stories of the books and their milieu. And so we're back to what I said earlier: the antique erotica collection is an aspirational thing, aspirational not just in terms of being expensive objects to display, but also in terms of linking the collector to a libertine past. The writer who called herself Debauchette collected antique erotica because, yes, she'd been a doctoral student in literature, but also because her collection linked her own life as a courtesan to literary courtesans of the past.
I suppose that in some ways a collection of antique or high-end erotica is the very definition of "fetish". Not in the sexual usage, mind you, but in the anthropological usage: investing an inanimate object with ritual or mystical powers. The books on the shelf aren't there to be used in any direct way. They're not there as a collection of scenes with the power to induce arousal. They're there to link you to a certain tradition and a certain history. They're markers, not things with intrinsic utility.
It's not the actual sex scenes that matter. Check on line for video of any kinds of activities you can imagine. Check on line, too, for fiction sites where any kind of specialized scene you'd like will be listed. What matters is the antique volume of erotica as ritual object, as something invested with the power to link you to a past, and to a pose.
I can imagine having those volumes on a shelf, and I can imagine knowing their histories and knowing how to apply Foucault and Barthes and Deleuze to them. I can imagine knowing the names and locations of the presses, and knowing how the books were distributed and what else the authors wrote. What I don't want them for is, well, erotica. Their genre matters, but only as part of their value as markers. They'd be in a collection on my shelves to say that I understood that there's a history of erotica, and I was linking myself to a tradition of literary libertines. Those things matter to me far more than the actual sex scenes inside the covers.
The collection is something I do want. Let's be clear about that. I'd like to have a collection of antique erotica as good as Debauchette's. There's no question about that. But I wouldn't be collecting it as erotica in and of itself. I'd want the collection as a statement about other things. And I can imagine looking at the volumes as objects, as things I'd explain to a lovely young visitor the way you'd explain paintings on your wall. But I do have to note that I want "antique erotica" as an aspirational thing, as a concept rather than as something to use. What the books would do is allow me to link myself to traditions I admire and skills I've cultivated. That's not unlike what all books do for me, and probably all the other objects in my life as well.
That's a legitimate question, I think. Erotica has a tenuous position in the literary world because it's seen not as literature, or even as a text to be analyzed, but as something that's simply utilitarian. The purpose of erotica is simply to produce arousal. To have a collection of erotica is to be assembling a shelf of what are in effect tools for getting off. A collection of antique or high-end erotica, the argument goes, is exactly like a shelf full of Fleshlights. An erotica collection can be seen as nothing more than a "spank bank" with antique fonts. Let's leave aside how much I despise "spank bank" as a term--- it's part of the whole vocabulary of words (e.g., "wank", "toss", "rub one out") designed to denigrate and mock male indulgence in the Solitary Vice ---and think for a moment about what the books do.
I'd want that erotica collection because...the books are objects with a certain kind of history, with links to a past of underground presses and clandestine circulation, to a specific kind of moneyed demimonde. To some degree, the actual stories inside the books are never as alluring as the stories of the books and their milieu. And so we're back to what I said earlier: the antique erotica collection is an aspirational thing, aspirational not just in terms of being expensive objects to display, but also in terms of linking the collector to a libertine past. The writer who called herself Debauchette collected antique erotica because, yes, she'd been a doctoral student in literature, but also because her collection linked her own life as a courtesan to literary courtesans of the past.
I suppose that in some ways a collection of antique or high-end erotica is the very definition of "fetish". Not in the sexual usage, mind you, but in the anthropological usage: investing an inanimate object with ritual or mystical powers. The books on the shelf aren't there to be used in any direct way. They're not there as a collection of scenes with the power to induce arousal. They're there to link you to a certain tradition and a certain history. They're markers, not things with intrinsic utility.
It's not the actual sex scenes that matter. Check on line for video of any kinds of activities you can imagine. Check on line, too, for fiction sites where any kind of specialized scene you'd like will be listed. What matters is the antique volume of erotica as ritual object, as something invested with the power to link you to a past, and to a pose.
I can imagine having those volumes on a shelf, and I can imagine knowing their histories and knowing how to apply Foucault and Barthes and Deleuze to them. I can imagine knowing the names and locations of the presses, and knowing how the books were distributed and what else the authors wrote. What I don't want them for is, well, erotica. Their genre matters, but only as part of their value as markers. They'd be in a collection on my shelves to say that I understood that there's a history of erotica, and I was linking myself to a tradition of literary libertines. Those things matter to me far more than the actual sex scenes inside the covers.
The collection is something I do want. Let's be clear about that. I'd like to have a collection of antique erotica as good as Debauchette's. There's no question about that. But I wouldn't be collecting it as erotica in and of itself. I'd want the collection as a statement about other things. And I can imagine looking at the volumes as objects, as things I'd explain to a lovely young visitor the way you'd explain paintings on your wall. But I do have to note that I want "antique erotica" as an aspirational thing, as a concept rather than as something to use. What the books would do is allow me to link myself to traditions I admire and skills I've cultivated. That's not unlike what all books do for me, and probably all the other objects in my life as well.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
EIghty-Nine: Bibliophilia
A few years ago there was a blogger who signed herself as "Debauchette". She did a very thoughtful, very clever, very hot blog about her career as a high-end escort. She had a second page elsewhere where she talked about the books she was reading. I was a follower of her blog, and I do miss the stories she'd tell. She wrote about always using a fountain pen for her paper journal, and she recommended the Lamy fountain pen. That was recommendation enough for me to order one, and I do give her credit for the pen.
I found an interview with Debauchette where she talked a bit about her life and her transition from grad school into being a "professional companion". The interviewer asked her about her hobbies, and Debauchette talked about her own specialized bibliophilia, about collecting antique erotica. That caught my eye, of course, and on a couple of levels.
I'd known that there was such a thing as "Victorian erotica" since I was in high school and saw the books (some real, some clever pastiches) that Grove Press was putting out in those days. Lots of books about lascivious swells and gents, lots of tales of debauched maidens in Mayfair. I was at university, though, before I read Steven Marcus' "The Other Victorians" and realized that there was a whole subterranean world of Victorian publishing that did expensive editions of erotica. I read Marcus' descriptions of the printing and distribution and found myself wishing I could have my own collection of erotica.
There were porn novels in those days--- paperbacks printed on the cheapest paper possible, bound in solid dull colours. You'd find them on spinners at bus stations or in convenience stores in the bad part of town. That's not what I wanted, of course. I read Marcus' long essay about "My Secret Life" and wanted a set. I wanted things from the upscale parts of the subterranean world. I remember a passage in (I think) Walter Kennedy's "The Secret Museum" where he noted what "upmarket" meant in the erotica world. A skilled craftsman (say, a master plumber) c. 1890 would've paid the equivalent of three or four month's wages for something like "My Secret Life". That was something I thought was doubly alluring: transgressive sex, yes, but also a kind of secret world where Dorian Gray types furnished their secret garçonnières with finely-bound illicit novels and memoirs.
I did try to buy a few things in my grad school days. There was a bookseller's in Brooklyn called C.J, Scheiner's that did a mail-order business in antique erotica from ads in the New York Review of Books, and I'd go through their catalogs and try to find things that fit a grad student's budget. I couldn't afford anything extravagant--- folios of hand-coloured prints, Regency survivals, early reprints of Sade. Oh, I did see a set or two of "My Secret Life" for sale, but memory says that even in those days a set brought four or five thousand dollars. I did get a rather nice hardbound edition of "Story of O", obviously handcrafted, and I got a couple of signed prints by Guido Crepax, but never anything that would go into a serious collection.
The interview with Debauchette did include photos of a few of her own treasures--- an early English edition of Aretino, a good copy of "Venice Preserv'd", some 1920s underground reprints of Sade's "Justine" and "Juliette". I'd like to see what else is on her shelves.
As for mine, though... I'd still like to collect antique erotica. I'd love an authentic set of "My Secret Life", and I'd like to have some of Rochester's plays. I might even like an edition of "The Romance of Lust". Though I wonder where one draws the line at "antique". Aretino or Tokugawa-era Japanese shunga would be all well and good, but I think I'd like to focus any hypothetical collection on post-1945 editions. Yes, good hardbound copies of "Story of the Eye" and "The Image", or good editions of Sade--- good meaning well-translated and annotated. And very probably some fashion-noir erotic photo collections from the 1970s through the mid-1990s.
Things like "My Secret Life" would be there as an exemplar of a secret world and clandestine high-end printing. To have things like Bataille or Sade or even "Story of O", though, I would want fairly recent well-bound editions, since the bindings would have to go hand-in-hand with modern translations and illustrations.
I will say that I want erotica in books--- in texts and photo collections. I want something tangible, something with a history. Streaming video can never have that.
But this raises a question. What out there is worth collecting now? Is there a world of high-end erotica done in the last ten or fifteen years that's worth seeing as collectible? And I will ask--- if you were setting up your own secret bookshelves, what would you collect? What would you collect not just for its value at provoking arousal, but for its sense of style, for its value as an object? Let me know what erotica you'd collect for your own hidden shelves.
I found an interview with Debauchette where she talked a bit about her life and her transition from grad school into being a "professional companion". The interviewer asked her about her hobbies, and Debauchette talked about her own specialized bibliophilia, about collecting antique erotica. That caught my eye, of course, and on a couple of levels.
I'd known that there was such a thing as "Victorian erotica" since I was in high school and saw the books (some real, some clever pastiches) that Grove Press was putting out in those days. Lots of books about lascivious swells and gents, lots of tales of debauched maidens in Mayfair. I was at university, though, before I read Steven Marcus' "The Other Victorians" and realized that there was a whole subterranean world of Victorian publishing that did expensive editions of erotica. I read Marcus' descriptions of the printing and distribution and found myself wishing I could have my own collection of erotica.
There were porn novels in those days--- paperbacks printed on the cheapest paper possible, bound in solid dull colours. You'd find them on spinners at bus stations or in convenience stores in the bad part of town. That's not what I wanted, of course. I read Marcus' long essay about "My Secret Life" and wanted a set. I wanted things from the upscale parts of the subterranean world. I remember a passage in (I think) Walter Kennedy's "The Secret Museum" where he noted what "upmarket" meant in the erotica world. A skilled craftsman (say, a master plumber) c. 1890 would've paid the equivalent of three or four month's wages for something like "My Secret Life". That was something I thought was doubly alluring: transgressive sex, yes, but also a kind of secret world where Dorian Gray types furnished their secret garçonnières with finely-bound illicit novels and memoirs.
I did try to buy a few things in my grad school days. There was a bookseller's in Brooklyn called C.J, Scheiner's that did a mail-order business in antique erotica from ads in the New York Review of Books, and I'd go through their catalogs and try to find things that fit a grad student's budget. I couldn't afford anything extravagant--- folios of hand-coloured prints, Regency survivals, early reprints of Sade. Oh, I did see a set or two of "My Secret Life" for sale, but memory says that even in those days a set brought four or five thousand dollars. I did get a rather nice hardbound edition of "Story of O", obviously handcrafted, and I got a couple of signed prints by Guido Crepax, but never anything that would go into a serious collection.
The interview with Debauchette did include photos of a few of her own treasures--- an early English edition of Aretino, a good copy of "Venice Preserv'd", some 1920s underground reprints of Sade's "Justine" and "Juliette". I'd like to see what else is on her shelves.
As for mine, though... I'd still like to collect antique erotica. I'd love an authentic set of "My Secret Life", and I'd like to have some of Rochester's plays. I might even like an edition of "The Romance of Lust". Though I wonder where one draws the line at "antique". Aretino or Tokugawa-era Japanese shunga would be all well and good, but I think I'd like to focus any hypothetical collection on post-1945 editions. Yes, good hardbound copies of "Story of the Eye" and "The Image", or good editions of Sade--- good meaning well-translated and annotated. And very probably some fashion-noir erotic photo collections from the 1970s through the mid-1990s.
Things like "My Secret Life" would be there as an exemplar of a secret world and clandestine high-end printing. To have things like Bataille or Sade or even "Story of O", though, I would want fairly recent well-bound editions, since the bindings would have to go hand-in-hand with modern translations and illustrations.
I will say that I want erotica in books--- in texts and photo collections. I want something tangible, something with a history. Streaming video can never have that.
But this raises a question. What out there is worth collecting now? Is there a world of high-end erotica done in the last ten or fifteen years that's worth seeing as collectible? And I will ask--- if you were setting up your own secret bookshelves, what would you collect? What would you collect not just for its value at provoking arousal, but for its sense of style, for its value as an object? Let me know what erotica you'd collect for your own hidden shelves.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Eighty-Eight: Nightcalls
Halloween is coming in a few days. It'll be a Thursday this year, which is an awkward day for a holiday. Whatever anyone does on Thursday night, there's still Friday (work, classes) to get through. Thursday night parties lead to Friday hangovers with no chance to sleep late, and a Friday morning post-Halloween Walk o' Shame is awkward indeed. Sitting hungover at a coffee shop in last night's Halloween costume on a Saturday or Sunday morning at least guarantees you'll be in good company. Coming home in last night's costume through crowds of office-bound day-dwellers is just a bit embarrassing.
Still and all, I like Halloween. I like it because it's an autumn holiday, one with lots of memories of childhood autumns. I like it because it opens the holiday season that takes us to year's end. And I like it because it's one of the trio of holidays that are about sex and delights.
Halloween as a holiday for children is one thing--- that's ghost stories and candy corn and candles inside jack o' lanterns. But Halloween for university girls and twentysomethings is about throwing off inhibitions. It's about slutty costumes, and well it should be. Halloween is a chance to give yourself to the night and to physical desire.
New Year's Eve and Valentine's are about sex, too, but in very different ways. Valentine's is about structured romance and the rituals of romance, and it's about romance as social display. New Year's Eve is about a kind of elegant, melancholy abandon. Kissing a beautiful stranger at the tick of midnight on New Year's Eve is about saying goodbye to another vanished year and about hoping the kiss will be a kind of magic for the new year. Halloween is something much more immediate, something much more basic. Halloween is about physical desire. It's about lust, and we need holidays that celebrate lust.
We've forgotten about lust, and about how powerful and exhilarating it can be. Or maybe not forgotten--- maybe we've become afraid of it. Lust and desire aren't about a cost-accounting view of life. They aren't about rational planning, or about understanding the "deeper context" and "genealogy" of things. Lust and desire are immediate. They're about immediate pleasure and immediate need. We're afraid of that now. We're afraid of the irrational in pleasure, afraid of risking our carefully-constructed social selves for pure adventure and physical delight.
We do need more of that, though. We need a holiday that is about slutty costumes and adventures and losing oneself in the night. We need holidays that proclaim that just for the night, the rules are suspended and that you're free to just seek out pure physical delight.
It will be a bit awkward this year. Friday may be a bit awkward--- hungover, yes, and an odd kind of speed bump before the weekend. But I think that Halloween needs to be valued as one night when you can dress up as someone seeking immediate pleasure, one night where you can shed a daytime identity and take up new masks...or throw away the mask you wear all day.
There are three days in any year where we celebrate the different aspects of sex and romance. Halloween isn't about chocolates and champagne, or about sympathetic magic under the ticking clock. It's about something much about pure id, pure adventure. Value that--- value that and go explore. You can stay home later and watch "Arsenic and Old Lace" or "The Trouble With Harry". Take Halloween night and go explore physical delights and all the things you can be or create.
Still and all, I like Halloween. I like it because it's an autumn holiday, one with lots of memories of childhood autumns. I like it because it opens the holiday season that takes us to year's end. And I like it because it's one of the trio of holidays that are about sex and delights.
Halloween as a holiday for children is one thing--- that's ghost stories and candy corn and candles inside jack o' lanterns. But Halloween for university girls and twentysomethings is about throwing off inhibitions. It's about slutty costumes, and well it should be. Halloween is a chance to give yourself to the night and to physical desire.
New Year's Eve and Valentine's are about sex, too, but in very different ways. Valentine's is about structured romance and the rituals of romance, and it's about romance as social display. New Year's Eve is about a kind of elegant, melancholy abandon. Kissing a beautiful stranger at the tick of midnight on New Year's Eve is about saying goodbye to another vanished year and about hoping the kiss will be a kind of magic for the new year. Halloween is something much more immediate, something much more basic. Halloween is about physical desire. It's about lust, and we need holidays that celebrate lust.
We've forgotten about lust, and about how powerful and exhilarating it can be. Or maybe not forgotten--- maybe we've become afraid of it. Lust and desire aren't about a cost-accounting view of life. They aren't about rational planning, or about understanding the "deeper context" and "genealogy" of things. Lust and desire are immediate. They're about immediate pleasure and immediate need. We're afraid of that now. We're afraid of the irrational in pleasure, afraid of risking our carefully-constructed social selves for pure adventure and physical delight.
We do need more of that, though. We need a holiday that is about slutty costumes and adventures and losing oneself in the night. We need holidays that proclaim that just for the night, the rules are suspended and that you're free to just seek out pure physical delight.
It will be a bit awkward this year. Friday may be a bit awkward--- hungover, yes, and an odd kind of speed bump before the weekend. But I think that Halloween needs to be valued as one night when you can dress up as someone seeking immediate pleasure, one night where you can shed a daytime identity and take up new masks...or throw away the mask you wear all day.
There are three days in any year where we celebrate the different aspects of sex and romance. Halloween isn't about chocolates and champagne, or about sympathetic magic under the ticking clock. It's about something much about pure id, pure adventure. Value that--- value that and go explore. You can stay home later and watch "Arsenic and Old Lace" or "The Trouble With Harry". Take Halloween night and go explore physical delights and all the things you can be or create.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Eighty-Seven: Compliments
I note that the actor Russell Brand is drawing fire from the usual quarters this weekend for having told an interviewer that he'd written a very political article because an attractive girl had asked him to do it. Needless to say, all I could do was sigh. Doing something because a lovely girl asks you seems to me to be the perfect reason for doing pretty much anything. It's certainly been the reason why I've done a great many things in life, and very, very few things are as persuasive as a beautiful girl.
I do wonder these days, though, about telling a girl she's beautiful. There seems to be a view out there in the gender warriors' world that says that beauty itself is a deeply suspect category and that telling someone she's beautiful is an aggressive act that erases all her "deeper" or more "fully human" or "important" qualities. Well, I'm not disposed to get into all that right now. At least I'm not disposed to get into the politics of it all. Though I do wonder what the current rules are for offering up compliments to beauty.
Oh, yes, rules. I believe in them. I believe in social rules. Rules and procedures are one of the great inventions of human society. They do make it easier to get through life, to know where you stand and what's expected of you. They smooth the edges of social interaction and keep you from having to constantly re-invent the wheel. And they keep you from over-thinking and over-analyzing--- and that's something whose importance you can't ever overstate.
But how do you pay compliments these days? I'm not talking about cat-calling here--- not at all. I'm talking about flirtation, yes, and also about just paying tribute to beauty.
I can remember being something like fifteen and seeing a very attractive girl (certainly older than I was, probably in her early twenties) walking across a parking lot in a very short dress one summer day and agonizing over how much I wanted to just say, "You have beautiful legs!" I was far too shy to do that, and I've regretted that all these years. I did want so desperately to say that. If I had said it, I didn't expect her to instantly offer me sex. I didn't want to say it to demean her or make her feel powerless. I wanted to say that because I was just so...aware...of how she looked. Being fifteen or so is an age when suddenly the world is full of beauty, of reminders of beauty and sex. I wanted to be able to say something, to acknowledge how amazing it was that the world had girls who looked like her in it.
Did I want her to notice me back? Well, I was younger and shy, and I certainly had no faith in my own looks. I knew that she wasn't going to throw herself at me because I'd complimented her legs. If I'd said it--- if I hadn't been afraid of her being offended or mocking me ---and she'd smiled and nodded as she walked by, I'd have been exhilarated all day. But I didn't expect even that. The point would've been to say it for its own sake.
What did I want her to feel? Complimented, I'd hope. I'm not used to ever receiving physical compliments, and I don't have experience at accepting compliments. But I would've wanted her to feel good about herself, to feel good about her presence in the world. I had no idea what her day had been like or what she was thinking about behind her sunglasses. Maybe being told you have great legs on a day when your job is awful or depressing things are happening means nothing at all. Or maybe it does. Maybe it does make a glum kind of day some tiny bit better. Maybe it reinforces feeling good on a good day. Sometimes I think that a compliment from a passing random stranger would be the best kind of compliment--- after all, it's not given out of social obligation or out of any hope of advantage. (Again, not cat-calling--- simply a compliment)
"You have beautiful legs!" That doesn't imply that you're not smart or thoughtful or skilled at your job. It doesn't say that those long, slender, sleek legs are your only assets. It just says that you do have beautiful legs. It's a small compliment. And of course it can apply to other things--- lovely hair, lovely eyes, even great wardrobe. I would've said it because I was walking across a parking lot and saw something that held my attention. Here was a lovely image on a summer's day--- someone I'd never know, someone whose life was intersecting with mine for twenty seconds as we passed ---and I wanted to say that the image was beautiful.
I was too shy that day at fifteen to say anything. I've certainly told other girls down the years that they had great legs or great eyes. Beauty matters--- I believe that, and I believe that beauty should be complimented. That doesn't mean other things shouldn't be complimented--- professional skills, intellect, knowledge. But there should be a way to say that you find someone attractive, that you find them visually appealing or aesthetically pleasing that isn't taken as somehow reductive or demeaning...or at least hasn't been re-defined as those things.
It's important to salvage the ability to offer up compliments. Courtesy is part of that; politeness always matters. Let's take that part of things as a given. But we do need to salvage the ability to compliment beauty, to salvage the ability to value beauty. Those things are important, and we need to guard those abilities and set out clear procedures. Any ideas on what they should be?
I do wonder these days, though, about telling a girl she's beautiful. There seems to be a view out there in the gender warriors' world that says that beauty itself is a deeply suspect category and that telling someone she's beautiful is an aggressive act that erases all her "deeper" or more "fully human" or "important" qualities. Well, I'm not disposed to get into all that right now. At least I'm not disposed to get into the politics of it all. Though I do wonder what the current rules are for offering up compliments to beauty.
Oh, yes, rules. I believe in them. I believe in social rules. Rules and procedures are one of the great inventions of human society. They do make it easier to get through life, to know where you stand and what's expected of you. They smooth the edges of social interaction and keep you from having to constantly re-invent the wheel. And they keep you from over-thinking and over-analyzing--- and that's something whose importance you can't ever overstate.
But how do you pay compliments these days? I'm not talking about cat-calling here--- not at all. I'm talking about flirtation, yes, and also about just paying tribute to beauty.
I can remember being something like fifteen and seeing a very attractive girl (certainly older than I was, probably in her early twenties) walking across a parking lot in a very short dress one summer day and agonizing over how much I wanted to just say, "You have beautiful legs!" I was far too shy to do that, and I've regretted that all these years. I did want so desperately to say that. If I had said it, I didn't expect her to instantly offer me sex. I didn't want to say it to demean her or make her feel powerless. I wanted to say that because I was just so...aware...of how she looked. Being fifteen or so is an age when suddenly the world is full of beauty, of reminders of beauty and sex. I wanted to be able to say something, to acknowledge how amazing it was that the world had girls who looked like her in it.
Did I want her to notice me back? Well, I was younger and shy, and I certainly had no faith in my own looks. I knew that she wasn't going to throw herself at me because I'd complimented her legs. If I'd said it--- if I hadn't been afraid of her being offended or mocking me ---and she'd smiled and nodded as she walked by, I'd have been exhilarated all day. But I didn't expect even that. The point would've been to say it for its own sake.
What did I want her to feel? Complimented, I'd hope. I'm not used to ever receiving physical compliments, and I don't have experience at accepting compliments. But I would've wanted her to feel good about herself, to feel good about her presence in the world. I had no idea what her day had been like or what she was thinking about behind her sunglasses. Maybe being told you have great legs on a day when your job is awful or depressing things are happening means nothing at all. Or maybe it does. Maybe it does make a glum kind of day some tiny bit better. Maybe it reinforces feeling good on a good day. Sometimes I think that a compliment from a passing random stranger would be the best kind of compliment--- after all, it's not given out of social obligation or out of any hope of advantage. (Again, not cat-calling--- simply a compliment)
"You have beautiful legs!" That doesn't imply that you're not smart or thoughtful or skilled at your job. It doesn't say that those long, slender, sleek legs are your only assets. It just says that you do have beautiful legs. It's a small compliment. And of course it can apply to other things--- lovely hair, lovely eyes, even great wardrobe. I would've said it because I was walking across a parking lot and saw something that held my attention. Here was a lovely image on a summer's day--- someone I'd never know, someone whose life was intersecting with mine for twenty seconds as we passed ---and I wanted to say that the image was beautiful.
I was too shy that day at fifteen to say anything. I've certainly told other girls down the years that they had great legs or great eyes. Beauty matters--- I believe that, and I believe that beauty should be complimented. That doesn't mean other things shouldn't be complimented--- professional skills, intellect, knowledge. But there should be a way to say that you find someone attractive, that you find them visually appealing or aesthetically pleasing that isn't taken as somehow reductive or demeaning...or at least hasn't been re-defined as those things.
It's important to salvage the ability to offer up compliments. Courtesy is part of that; politeness always matters. Let's take that part of things as a given. But we do need to salvage the ability to compliment beauty, to salvage the ability to value beauty. Those things are important, and we need to guard those abilities and set out clear procedures. Any ideas on what they should be?
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Eighty-Six: Specifications
There's a lovely girl not far outside London with whom I correspond. We've exchanged letters and e-mails for almost three years now, and she's been quite kind and charming and supportive. I've had a birthday call or two from her, and she does send me mp3s of songs she thinks I'd like (yes, very good tastes). When she writes, she calls me "beautiful boy". That always makes me grin. It's a lovely thing to hear, and it's so delightfully absurd. After all, she knows my age quite exactly, and it's been a lifetime--- almost her lifetime, anyway ---since I could be called a boy. I'm certainly not complaining though. She's made surprise calls where I've picked up and heard her voice with that lovely Received Pronunciation accent saying, "Hullo, beautiful boy..." All I can do is feel amused and very, very pleased.
It's a silly thing, I know. A lovely posh girl a few thousand miles away calling someone of my age "beautiful boy"? Of course it's silly, but it means a lot. I'm not someone who gets compliments that have any connection to beauty, so of course it means a lot.
I read an on-line piece today asserting that males in contemporary America have very little ability to accept physical compliments, or to imagine that they might be physically desired. Men, the article says, are used to being judged on how useful they are, and they have no real idea of how they might be sexy or sexually desirable. They're certainly not used to being given compliments, the author claimed. In his lifetime, he wrote, he'd had a woman compliment his physical appearance twice--- once every twelve years of his adult life. He couldn't imagine a woman wanting to see him naked.
Whatever problems I have with the article, I did have to think about the idea of compliments and desire. I pay lovely girls compliments; I always have. It's part of flirtation, part of roué-hood, part of the social graces expected of a gentleman born in the region and city where I'm from. I'm all-too-aware of beauty and desire on any city street here in early autumn. Thinking back, though...I have to agree with at least part of the article. It's hard to recall girls complimenting me on anything physical, and it is very hard to imagine ever being desired for anything physical.
Lovers and young companions who've complimented me have always focused on the things I know. Girls who've been attracted to me have been attracted by the things I know. That's the classic exchange, always: youth and beauty exchanged for knowledge and experience. Even when I was young, though, girls who liked me told me that I was smart, not that I was handsome, let alone hot. A couple may have told me that they liked my eyes, but that's as far as that went. A girl in my undergraduate days told me one night in her dorm bed that I had wonderful hands, but I knew she was talking about being touched and caressed and not about anything to do with physical beauty. Once, not so very long ago, a young companion in a hotel bed in another city looked at me and offered me a particular physical compliment--- something that should've been a line in some "erotic romance" ---and I did kiss her and thank her, though my memory was good enough to know where she'd acquired that phrase: I'd once told my young companion that a girl in some sex blog I'd read had written about her latest lover's...attributes...and she'd used those exact words. Well, I did appreciate the thought. Not a compliment that I could believe, then or ever--- or maybe just not one that I'd be willing to believe. Nonetheless, I did kiss her and thank her. She may have just been offering up a quoted compliment she thought I wanted or needed to hear, but it mattered that she'd made the effort.
I can agree that I know what it's like to feel useful, but I have no idea what it's like to be desired, or at least desired as a body. I know how to be seductive; I have no idea what it's like to be desired. Part of the limitation there may be that I'm straight. I've read enough early Andrew Holleran to know that there may have been swoony physical desire in the gay world of the 1970s, but that's outside my range of experience. Desire itself I know--- the noonday demon, after all ---and I know what it feels like to have my eye light on a lovely, long-legged undergraduate girl at a coffee shop or walking down city streets. I know that breathtaking is a word that can have a very literal meaning. I know about what it's like to reach across a bed and caress and name all the elements of a beautiful girl's body: those long, slender legs, those hipbones, that long bare back, the arch of those cheekbones. I have no idea what it's like to have a girl look across a bed and find any physical part of me alluring. At this late stage, it's unlikely to happen. I do wonder, though--- what is it like to feel desired, or to believe that one is worth being desired?
I once told another London friend that if ever I had an on-line dating profile, I'd insist that the profile picture be a solid black square. The text would emphasize things I know, or at least emphasize intellectual interests. I'd have no idea at all how to present anything physical. I'd certainly have no idea how to respond to physical compliments, and I can't imagine receiving any.
Beauty matters. Beauty is worth tribute. I believe those things, and I do sigh over beauty. Yet I can't imagine beauty that isn't female. I certainly can't imagine that I could ever be sighed over, or that I might be taken as desirable for anything I am in the flesh rather than for things I know. I have no idea what it is to be desired as a body. I can write about desire, and I can certainly experience it. I can look at beauty as it whispers by and feel physical desire. Being male, though, or being male and being who and what I am, I can't be desirable or desired as a body. I have my virtues and uses, but I won't meet any criteria for being looked at and desired. My very lovely young friend in the Home Counties calls me her "beautiful boy", and I do smile, though I fear the smile is more about the absurdity of it all than about accepting admiration.
It's a silly thing, I know. A lovely posh girl a few thousand miles away calling someone of my age "beautiful boy"? Of course it's silly, but it means a lot. I'm not someone who gets compliments that have any connection to beauty, so of course it means a lot.
I read an on-line piece today asserting that males in contemporary America have very little ability to accept physical compliments, or to imagine that they might be physically desired. Men, the article says, are used to being judged on how useful they are, and they have no real idea of how they might be sexy or sexually desirable. They're certainly not used to being given compliments, the author claimed. In his lifetime, he wrote, he'd had a woman compliment his physical appearance twice--- once every twelve years of his adult life. He couldn't imagine a woman wanting to see him naked.
Whatever problems I have with the article, I did have to think about the idea of compliments and desire. I pay lovely girls compliments; I always have. It's part of flirtation, part of roué-hood, part of the social graces expected of a gentleman born in the region and city where I'm from. I'm all-too-aware of beauty and desire on any city street here in early autumn. Thinking back, though...I have to agree with at least part of the article. It's hard to recall girls complimenting me on anything physical, and it is very hard to imagine ever being desired for anything physical.
Lovers and young companions who've complimented me have always focused on the things I know. Girls who've been attracted to me have been attracted by the things I know. That's the classic exchange, always: youth and beauty exchanged for knowledge and experience. Even when I was young, though, girls who liked me told me that I was smart, not that I was handsome, let alone hot. A couple may have told me that they liked my eyes, but that's as far as that went. A girl in my undergraduate days told me one night in her dorm bed that I had wonderful hands, but I knew she was talking about being touched and caressed and not about anything to do with physical beauty. Once, not so very long ago, a young companion in a hotel bed in another city looked at me and offered me a particular physical compliment--- something that should've been a line in some "erotic romance" ---and I did kiss her and thank her, though my memory was good enough to know where she'd acquired that phrase: I'd once told my young companion that a girl in some sex blog I'd read had written about her latest lover's...attributes...and she'd used those exact words. Well, I did appreciate the thought. Not a compliment that I could believe, then or ever--- or maybe just not one that I'd be willing to believe. Nonetheless, I did kiss her and thank her. She may have just been offering up a quoted compliment she thought I wanted or needed to hear, but it mattered that she'd made the effort.
I can agree that I know what it's like to feel useful, but I have no idea what it's like to be desired, or at least desired as a body. I know how to be seductive; I have no idea what it's like to be desired. Part of the limitation there may be that I'm straight. I've read enough early Andrew Holleran to know that there may have been swoony physical desire in the gay world of the 1970s, but that's outside my range of experience. Desire itself I know--- the noonday demon, after all ---and I know what it feels like to have my eye light on a lovely, long-legged undergraduate girl at a coffee shop or walking down city streets. I know that breathtaking is a word that can have a very literal meaning. I know about what it's like to reach across a bed and caress and name all the elements of a beautiful girl's body: those long, slender legs, those hipbones, that long bare back, the arch of those cheekbones. I have no idea what it's like to have a girl look across a bed and find any physical part of me alluring. At this late stage, it's unlikely to happen. I do wonder, though--- what is it like to feel desired, or to believe that one is worth being desired?
I once told another London friend that if ever I had an on-line dating profile, I'd insist that the profile picture be a solid black square. The text would emphasize things I know, or at least emphasize intellectual interests. I'd have no idea at all how to present anything physical. I'd certainly have no idea how to respond to physical compliments, and I can't imagine receiving any.
Beauty matters. Beauty is worth tribute. I believe those things, and I do sigh over beauty. Yet I can't imagine beauty that isn't female. I certainly can't imagine that I could ever be sighed over, or that I might be taken as desirable for anything I am in the flesh rather than for things I know. I have no idea what it is to be desired as a body. I can write about desire, and I can certainly experience it. I can look at beauty as it whispers by and feel physical desire. Being male, though, or being male and being who and what I am, I can't be desirable or desired as a body. I have my virtues and uses, but I won't meet any criteria for being looked at and desired. My very lovely young friend in the Home Counties calls me her "beautiful boy", and I do smile, though I fear the smile is more about the absurdity of it all than about accepting admiration.
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